GROUP WORK
for our film...
SILENT ALARM
Plot: When Frank, a hitman with a Turkish Delight fetish stumbles across two idiotic youths of today, Monty and Levi, trying... well... failing to rob an offlicence owned by enigmatic, Samuari loving Chung Wong-Woo.
Genre: DARK COMEDY
What Is DARK COMEDY?
Definition of Dark Comedy: a comic work that employs farce and morbid humor, which, in its simplest form, is humor that makes light of subject matter usually considered taboo. Black humor corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor. Black comedy is often controversial due to its subject matter.
Below are examples of films which consist of the genre Dark Comedy or contain elements of the genre.
Have a read at the Cyanide and Happiness comic below. Do you consider this to be funny and comedic or just plain distasteful and offensive? Or did you laugh but felt bad about laughing afterwards? This is the essence of Dark Comedy.
An example of comedy having gloomy or disturbing elements, in which a character suffers an irreparable loss.
So What Makes A Dark Comedy?
Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell Discuss The Dark Comedy in Seven Psycopaths and In Bruges
Quentin Tarintino Talks About Reservoire Dogs
In 5:07 he explains the intention of the "Infamous Torture Scene" and his reasoning of using excessive violence in his films.
Christian Bale explains his twisted, demented, Psycopathic character in the film American Psycho
Click on the logo below to go to an article regarding the 25 coolest hitmen in movies.
Character Profiles
Below is a button which leads to a Character Profile of The Chicken Man. I had to locate pins, images and articles or anything I could find that would explain the Chicken Man's character.
Final Screenplay and Treatment
Please find below the treatment of the original storyline by myself and the final draft of the script written by Jada Brevett.
My involvement with the script was co editor. As an ensemble I suggested ideas within the group for the screenplay of what the characters fate would be ie. The Chicken Man after he get's out of the boot of the car and also their dialogue.
SCREENPLAY
TREATMENT
PROPS
Below are the props that are going to be used for our film. It includes the following:
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Why did you choose it?
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What significance does it have to the genre and narrative?
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How does it add to the creative make up of you film?
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What will the audience understand from the use of this item?
asian people eating noodles.
Lighting
Reservoire Dogs: Here you a low angle shot in the trunk of a car with three criminals up above. This was exactly the cinematogrpahy we were aiming for in the scene where after the Hitman completes his shopping after the first scene.
Wanted: Here we see James McAvoy in a supermarket. This is a simple shot however the genre of the film is Dark so this is identical to the genre we're making and the film also.
The American: This gives me the perfect image of our character the Himan. Middle Aged, alone, miserable, rock hard and solid, focused, concentrated, etc. Also carrying weaponry only professional hitmen would carry to perform a task.
In Bruges: gives us also the mood of the film. Two hitmen waiting in Bruges awaiting orders. It goes deep into the characters lives as hitmen rather than the stereotypical image. This allows us to sympathise with these characters.
Cinematography
Drive: I chose this picture because I found the vibrant colours visually fascinating and vivid. You can also see in this image that this is taking place in the nighttime. It gives you an essance of standing in the dark with ngihtlights, signs and lamposts shining/glowing in the background.
Bound: This was an interesting find. This shot works well in cinematography as well as in Lighting. You see the camera being placed in the back of the car and see a two shot of the characters in the dark - identical to Levi and Monty when they are having their row. Lighting wise you see blurred out light dots probably coming from lamposts, carlights, etc. The lighting is dark and coloured lights are blurred out or out of focus. This informs me, interestingly that you can focus more on the characters than the lighting. Maybe by not revealing their faces.
Two Inspirational Images for the film: Lighting, Mood and Cinematography
Here we had to find two images for three things
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The Lighting
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Cinematography
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Mood of the film
These images give us an idea of what we are aim for in terms of visuals as well as creativity and what we could we work with.
Mood
Film Company Logo
Our film company name is called Gotcha Films. In the background, you see brickwalls which may suggest, urbanness, or streetlike wise, etc. The word "Gotcha!" is often used in terms of excitement which is why we used this word. It appeals to the audience and promises them that the film they are about to see will be full of excitement. The entire logo is represented as a flashing light sign in the nightitme which may link to our Off License in the film. This video contains Audio but if it did, it would contain a "ZZZZZ" sound.
Casting
Below are the Starnow discriptions of our characters for the people who would like to audition for the role.We made sure that the discriptions were clear enought to inform what they would look lik and what their mannerisms would be like as well.
So who are our cast?
After months of search and discussion we finally reached our decision. Click on the Hollywood Star to reveal our Final Cast for our Short Movie.
Survey Monkey Survey
We constructed a Survey Monkey asking the public on social media (Facebook) questions about how our film should look like, what sort of props would there be whilst also concerning what their interests should be. Click on the monkey symbol below to go to the survey.
Questionnaire Analysis
We had a number of 40 correspondents who took our survey. Below are the results to some of our questions and my analysis of each result. I will answer the following question through each results:
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What did we learn from the audience responses?
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What did the audience get us to think differently?
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Did we take any audience feeback for that particular question?
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Why did we reject audience feeback for that particular question of our idea?
According to lighting, more people preferred Low Key (Dark) lighting for our film rather than High Key (light). Since they knew what our genre was going to be, they probably thought that low key lighting would the give the atmosphere of genre. Look at this picture of Brad Pitt in Fight Club. The image is very broody, dark and mysterious and it looks like the only source of light is the lamp above him. This offers the viewers a sense of mystery toward the character and story as well as intense scenery taking place in dark and mysterious locations.
Mostly females took our survey then men. 14/40 being Male and 25/40 being Female. And only one was claimed as "other" which added up to 40. This could be done as a joke which shows they will love our film since it's comedy!
It seems as though everyone is agreeing with us here. They are understanding the logic of our character, Levi, choosing an Off License to rob in the night rather than a supermarket, or a salon.
The majority age range of our survey takers are between 16 - 20. This is what we want since this is our target audience for our movie. This type of age range is the same as Levi and Monty so they can engage with the characters and relate to them as well. However we also have a reasonable amount of people over the age 35 taking our suvery aswell which the Hitman and Chong Wong Wo possibly are so they can understand all of our characters as well.
The majority of people who took our survey preferred Comedy movies which is pretty normal if you just want to have a laugh. Considering our audiences are not film making students, I would imagine them as sort of, "lying down on the couch and putting a funny movie while eating a packet of crisps," type of people. They don't take film seriously or some may not be that keen on movies.
The second most highest is Dark Comedy. This genre sort of the same with comedy except with the element Darkness added to this genre. The least was Western because it was probably too specific within time, place and characteristics. They probably thought of the stereotypical image of a cowboys and horses. Luckily, our film is not a Western. HOWEVER we may include some parody-like elements of Western scenes when we see Levi psyching himself up to rob the off license, which therefore makes it comical/spoof.
The majority of 40 people thought the car on our right would be suitable for our teenage characters, Monty and Levi. In our film we changed to show how the characters are in terms of wit and relationship. Monty is the one driving but it is not his car, it's his girlfriend's. But if this were not the case and the car was assumably Monty's or Levi's who are proper stereoypical chavs, then this car would be considered more likely for it to be their's. Very middleclass but nothing fancy. Not too old lookin, just very modern. As if it's not their's to show that they probably can't afford one or they are too yougn to own one.
The majority of people imagined a hitman would be driving in a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado. This is more like a stereotypical image of what a hitman would drive around. Gives you the essence of the Godfather, Goodfellas, etc. Very cliche gangster movie iconic figures. This is what we are trying to avoid. This is NOT what we are going for. We do not imagine our character, Frank the Hitman to be some form of a stereotype as opposed to Monty, Levi and Chong Wong Woo/The Clerk who are. This would create more depth to our main character/ protoganist... (I'm sorry) ANTI-protagonist... and would make him more engaging and not predicatable, flat or two dimensional. However we did ask our audience about what they thought which car a regular hitman would drive and we did not ask them specifically which car OUR CHARACTER would drive. Nevertheless, the audience gave their input and it was interesting to see their thoughts.
Colour Grading is done in post production when we finish our filming and then we start to edit the clips. We asked the audience what they thought which sort of color grading they perferred. A majority of people chose Warm and by looking at this picture of a scene in a french film called "Amelie", I can see why. Apparently French films usually go for this sort of colour grading because it offers warmth, comfort and romance. Amelie is a romantic comedy film however does contain some dark elements as well, including suicide but is shown in a comical way. This proves that Colour grading and visuals can be deceiving. But the question is in terms of visuals, do we want our colour grading to look romantic?
On the contrary, the sort of style in Colour Grading we are aiming for is Cold Colour Grading.
The picture above is a transition from Warm to Cold in The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo. This gives more depth, mystery and drama. Gives it a more dark, gloomy visual of potraying the character. This is also suitable for our film since our film takes place in mid afternoon to nightime.
For our final question, we asked them what music did they think we could use when the teenager pull up outisde the off license. The majority of them said Rap. It looks as though they chose their options based on their own taste and opinions since they have not read the script and may not know Monty and Levi, inside out. However they are aware that they are chavs/lads and usually these sort of people would listen to Rap music.
I was looking back on this question and thought should we have included more different types of music as options as well, such as; rock, jazz, heavy metal, etc. ? But then realised that if we did, very little to none would pick them.
CONCLUSION
Due to the face that in some questions we were not too specific about what sort of people our characters were, the audience's based their answers off of stereotypical imagery of what these characters would look like, for eg. the hitman's car, music, the lad's cars. And that is fine since they have not read the script. The audience's feedback was extremely helpful becuase they offered us ideas to work with and also ideas to avoid: for example when we asked what Colour Grading we would use, the audience went for warm, when we were aiming for cold. However there was a reason why we said "you can pick more than one" in that question, the idea of going for a combination between two styles of colour grading would make our film look very interesting and visually engaging. We would take this into our consideration.
Overall, we are satisfied with our audience's feedback as they were extremely helpful as they offered us new ideas to work with what sort of styles to go for interms of visuals, lighting, colour grading and music. The most important thing we know is that a majority of them love Dark Comedy or any sort of Comedy movies which is good enough for them to enjoy our film.
Art Of The Title: Notes on SPECTRE
I had to watch Art Of Title Opening Sequences and took notes on them. Below are the notes on: symbolism, lyricism,
The reason why I chose this opening sequence was becuase James Bond opening sequences are traditionally well made with enticingly stunning songs and storytelling imagery which could be used in the title sequences of our film.
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Fire
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Non diegetic Music kicks off.
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Centre character: Bond.
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Symbolism: the octopus on the ring
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Star listing
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Credit, author of the novel: who wrote it. paying homage to him.
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Title of the film with the octopus symbol in the background which gives us an idea of what SPECTRE is. the octopus represents SPECTRE.
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Shockingly we see a live moving dark, black octopus so the purpose of the octopus could be literal as well as metaphorical. the symbol lives.
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Music helps reinforce the enigma by delivering lyrics such as, “could you break my fall” as we see a silhouetted man and woman falling and reaching for each other’s hands as a representation of love or trust, etc. connotation and denotation
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Relationships between characters. Title sequences can create enigmas for example: who are these people? the octopus shows that Bond may be controlled or tricked. Is the woman he’s with who she says she is?
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“A million shards of glass” special effects transition images. smooth storytelling. glass shattering, black, white greyish cold colour grading giving off a tone of darkness, danger and death. All the characters that are being depicted have died as they faces faded away into smoke and dust. We then see people dressed in black standing in what seems to be a funeral and Bond is walking, which makes him stand out. That no matter how many people get killed good or bad, he keeps moving forward.
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Back to the beginning: the ring.
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The things that you are seeing are all linked or centred on the ring.
Filming Schedule Call Sheets and Shot Lists
Sunday 7th Febuary 2016
Saturday 13th Febuary 2016
Here is the shot list for our film. It contains all the different key elements of each shot to be taken which we could bring to set and have with us when filming to make the process quick and efficient.
Storyboards
We decided to split the script 4 ways and give each person in the group a part of the script to storyboard so we all get to show our vision and how we created it. My contribution within Storyboards is that I did the scenes involving the begining/opening sequence, the hitman and his dismissive manner towards the annoying clerk in the supermarket, his encouterment with the little creepy girl and him driving to the off license. However this was when we were concentrating on the first draft of our script before it was changed including the characters, introduction and scenes. These sections were further developed by Anastasia Drew.
I have not uploaded every single page as there are well over 80 pages of shots from me.
